Roll Back Malaria? The scarcity of international aid for malaria control

• Published in: Malaria Journal
• Main Authors: Attaran Amir, Narasimhan Vasant
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2003
• Subjects: Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Infectious and parasitic diseases; RC109-216; Arctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-2-8; https://doaj.org/article/d7cae6d87bc04f698ac15bb54e6f44c7

Abstract The WHO announced the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) movement in 1998, with the goal of halving malaria deaths by 2010, and halving again by 2015. It is widely agreed that reaching this goal requires a major increase in international aid funding for malaria control, to a budget of perhaps $1.5 – $2.5 billion annually. To ascertain whether progress is being made, we compiled data self-reported by the donors to the Development Assistance Committee of OECD, and also to ourselves directly. We find that, in fact, the total amount of international aid dedicated to malaria control, from the 23 richest donor countries plus the World Bank, remains in the range of $100 million annually – a figure that is virtually unchanged since the start of RBM. This lack of progress toward increasing funding very seriously threatens RBM and demands that WHO regularly audit and report on malaria control funding, with the certainty that RBM will fail to meet its deadline of 2010 if this is not done.